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Stocktaking the first Post 2015 meeting

There is less than 250 days left for governments to
agree to what Heads of State will agree to at the end of September. This has
been a long road from the time that Colombia, Guatemala and Peru raised the
idea of the SDGs in July 2011 to where we find ourselves today.

STOCKTAKING
SESSION

The first session of the Post 2015 process – the
Stocktaking Session - with the two Co-Facilitators of
the negotiations, Ambassador David
Donoghue, Permanent Representative of
Ireland to the
UN, and Ambassador
Macharia Kamau, Permanent
Representative of Kenya - was held from 19-21st of
January 2015.

In December the UNGA agreed to the timetable to
remind us what this is all about:

Declaration
(17-20 February)

Sustainable Development Goals (23-27
March)

Means of Implementation and Global
Partnership for Development (20-24th of April)

Follow Up and Review
(18th to 22nd May)

After that starting in June (22nd) are three negotiating sessions.

The Stocktaking session was also organized around
the four substantive areas.

On the Declaration any one interested in influencing this should
be sharing suggested paras with governments now and during the next few weeks
as governments will already be coming to an initial view on what should be in the
Declaration and what should not be there.

During the discussions at the Stocktaking
session there were quiet wide views on what it could be like. The
Europeans and US wanted a shorter document while many G77 saw it as a space to
take a broader look at the world and would be suggesting within it elements not
reflected in the SDGs.

The co-facilitators will circulate in the next few
weeks an ‘elements paper’ on the Declaration which will also help
stakeholders in their preparation. My recommendation is to look at the
Millennium Declaration as a model; regarding the issues of peace and
security, the World Summit 2005 outcome document would be of greater help those
stakeholders interested in that area. Other documents worth looking at are the
Rio Declaration (1992) and the MDG+10 (2010) outcomes. There was some support for the idea that the document might be structured around the UN Secretary Generals six elements (dignity, people, prosperity, planet, justice and partnership).

On the Sustainable Development Goalsand
targets it was clear that there was little support among member states for
reopening what was agreed at the SDG OWG. The UK was one of the countries that
had advocated a smaller number of goals, but has now been told to stop doing
that by the UK parliament, and at least in public is doing what they were told
to do.

The UN Task Team has started carrying out a ‘technical
proofing’ of the targets. This prompted a few key G-77 governments to
push back at them doing this. In fact they should have been doing some of this already
during the OWG, but this clearly had not happened. The concern now is that the UN is basically
interfering with what governments have already agreed to. The issue revolves
around if they try and suggest that some of the targets instead might be
indicators.

Linked to this is the indicators issue the process will be under the
Statistical Commission . Here you can find the
draft decision for the March Statistical Commission plus in Annex 1 what would
be done on indicators through the establishment of an inter-agency committee
(see point 36).

Means
of Implementation was the least negotiated section of
the SDG OWG. The two Ambassadors that are facilitating the Finance for
Development process addressed the Stocktaking meeting – at this point the
process is on two parallel tracks and the FfD process is not engaged enough in
the sustainable development finance ideas. Clearly there will be a major
challenge to link the two processes.

Follow-up
and review

This is a new area that governments will need to begin
develop their thinking about. this will include issues such as

theHLPF and ECOSOC;

National follow-up mechanisms including
National Councils and Parliaments;

Comments

As usually excellent commentary and summary. I only wonder about the statement that "There was some support for the idea that the document might be structured around the UN Secretary Generals six elements (dignity, people, prosperity, planet, justice and partnership)." I guess "some" is pretty vague and not inconsistent with a general coolness on the UNSG's report by most States that I understood.

the moderator was Geoffrey Hamilton Chief of the PPP Programme at UNECE, asked a number of question. My comments were as follows:1. Do the 8 Guiding Principles on People-First PPPs reflect the new model that is needed for the UN Sustainable Development Goals?

One of my colleagues on the panel here did make a comment about regulation. I would remind everyone that the lack of regulation around the banks saw them privatize the profits and socialized the losses. We cant see the same with PPPs. I would comment on what Geoffrey said in his opening about someone from the EU commenting that too many rules might frighten away some in the private sector. Well I say so be it. If they d…

Who leads UNEP? The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is – at its core – an organization driven by member states, particularly with the setting up of United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) after Rio+20. However, stakeholders play an important role in the organization, providing guidance in the realms of policy and science. This is to assist member states in making good decisions and to work in partnership in delivering these decisions within the framework of the UNEP Programme of Work.
UNEP’s functions are inherently political, and member states define such core functions of UNEP has in the normative and political convening spaces in the programme of work. Any work with stakeholders, including the private sector, needs to be anchored in that programme of work. The hope of many member states and stakeholders is that their concerns about the recent direction of UNEP have been heard and are being acted upon by its leadership.

Felix Dodds is a Senior Fellow at the Global Research Institute and a Senior Affiliate at the Water Institute at University of North Carolina and an Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute. He was for 20 years the Executive Director of Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future (1992-2012). He played a significant role in the Rio+20 Conference and has been active at the UN since 1990 attending key meetings on sustainable development.He is an International Ambassador for the City of Bonn.
In 2011 he chaired the UN DPI NGO 64th Conference on Sustainable Societies - Responsive Citizens, he also co-chaired the UN Commission on Sustainable Development NGO Steering Committee (1997-2001)
He has written or edited 14 books his latest is Negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals with Abassador Donoghue and Jimena Roesch which completes the Vienna Cafe Trilogy with the New Development Agenda and 'From Rio+20 to the New Development Agenda' written with Jorge Laguna and Liz Thompson and Only One Earth written with Maurice Strong and Michael Strauss. .His other books are: The Water, Food, Energy and Climate Nexus: Challenges and an Agenda for Action edited by Felix Dodds and Jamie Bartram (2016); Governance for Sustainable Development (2015) (edited); The Plain Language Guide to Rio+20 (2013); Into the 21st Century (Green Print 1988),
+ The Way Forward Beyond Agenda 21 (1997);
+ Earth Summit 2002 (2000);
+ Multi-stakeholder processes (2002);
+ How to Lobby at Intergovernmental Meetings (2004);
+ Human and Environmental Security (2005);
+ Negotiating and Implementing MEAs (2007);
+ Climate and Energy Insecurity (2009);
+ Biodiversity and Ecosystem Insecurity (2011);
+ Only One Earth (2012). Most recently he has written his forst comic with Michael Strauss Santa's Green Christmas: Father Christmas Battles Climate Change (2016); He writes occasionally for the BBC Green Room and Outreach, and Network 2012. He has written for BEST NME, Liberator, New Democrat, New Statesman, Habitat, IISD MEA Bulletin
He has been an advisor on the UK, Danish and European Union delegations for meetings on environment. ( the Danish were the most fun :-) )
From 2006 and 2008 at the San Sebastian Film Festival he conducted a ten day blog linking the festival themes to the politics of the day He is also twittering @felixdodds
He chaired the National League of Young Liberals and was a member of the Liberal Party Council and Policy Panel on Defence. He is at present President of Amber Valley Liberal Democrats. His Power to the People book is a coming of age book in a political world